EARLY ACCESS // Candy Cane Laine & No Girl

Wow this sure takes me back!! This is great!

Rhys P.

These two are so cute! Omg I love them!

Niquey

The improvement is amazing :' 0

YuyuSunshine

This is why I’m glad to support because of your openness and transparency which is highly rare in an individual.

Scott Thigpen

True! I've never thought about that, how pixel art might get smoothed out in a weird way when it gets printed because irl paper "pixels" are so much more dense. If you ever decide to do more pixel art I think it'd be really awesome to see how your style translates!

Mollsie

Thank you for the response! I'm the same way :) I received some advice to use blocks recently so I started to doubt myself.

Thank you for your very detailed response Lois!

Scott Thigpen

sounds like a good plan! it's important to practice and make studies that put the focus on learning and experimenting. that aids artistic growth the most. wishing you the best of luck in reaching your goals!

Loish

hey scott! that's a lot of questions, i'll try to address them one by one: how much time i draw per day: not that much. usually something like 3-5 hours per weekday. if i draw more than that i get a lot of issues with strain in my arm! I try to be consistent in setting aside time to draw during the week. sometimes i'll draw a bit in weekends or evenings, but that usually leads to strain issues as well so more often i just stick to those shorter timeslots on the weekdays. it seems like my output is huge but i think it looks that way because of consistency. about social media: i am on social media a lot, so i don't really avoid it. for me, social media has worked out pretty well - helps me to feel connected, gives me inspiration and input, keeps me motivated to keep creating content. i do think it's important to be aware that the response to your art on social media doesn't reflect the quality of the art itself. social media is more about interaction, engagement and branding, so i see it as something separate from artistic ability. that helps me to focus on art for the sake of art. defining moments in the last 15 years: in my artistic ability, i just always gradually improved with time because i consistently took time to draw and also make studies and take time to learn and improve. so there wasn't really a turning point there, more like just a slow and gradual improvement where i became more and more comfortable with my drawing ability. career moments that changed things in my life were releasing my first artbook, after that i started being invited to more events. and also working with guerrilla games on horizon, because other clients started to take me seriously more often after that. hopefully this helps in some way!

Loish

oh and about the gift - that is so cool! maybe i subconsciously channelled that for this sketch! :)

Loish

hmm, i think i would avoid it simply because it would never be high res enough for print, and also because resolutions have changed so much across platforms and it would be hard to preserve the pixellated quality. but maybe i should just try it as an experiment haha

Loish

i usually prefer rounder and more organic shapes, i find blocks to be a bit too stiff!

Loish

Amazing. 💜

Emma Hayes

I remember ALL of these!!!!! I’m so pumped to see them together too!! Makes me want to do fan art of them honestly lol. I love the clothing styles, the body types, and the colors. And of course I love these characters already.

Trinly

Did you ever use the 'block method' to draw anatomy? Or is it something that you would recommend?

Omg I just remembered that I drew them both together as a birthday gift for you back in 2007 LOL. You were my favorite artist back then, and you still are now ❤️ Thank you so much for so many wonderful years of art and inspiration! 🥰

Mollsie

I've never thought of them as sisters, but they do look like it now that you mention it! Man, all your old oekakis bring back so much nostalgia, I still love them all so much 😄❤️ Do you think you'd ever try oekaki or pixel art again, just to see how your style would translate now?

Mollsie

follow up - I'd like to, in 3 years, move back into illustration as a goal. So that's why I'm practicing feverishly and looking to people I consider masters of their craft (you) as studies along with my own regimented studies with mentors

Scott Thigpen

Hey @Lois, I have a question (well, I seem to always have questions for you :D ). So I was an illustrator for the Wall Street Journal for decades (I used Adobe Illustrator religiously) and then burned out. A decade later I've started practicing figure drawing (with a mentor) and now environmental landscape work, usually daily and for a few hours (deliberately, more when I can). With that preface, I'm all in for working deliberately and using my free time to draw (unless my wife and I do something together, then drawing takes a quick backseat). You always seem to be a machine pumping out this work, then you've got your client work too? How much time are you drawing per day? How do you deal with the constant chatter of social media and avoiding it? Also, where you are right now (vs where you were 15 years ago), when do you think you "pushed over" (I know it's a gradual process, but usually there's some defining moment people can recall). I gave myself a goal that I wanted to see a turning point in my figure drawing studies + color work (like environmental landscapes) which would be 3 years (also, that's when I hit the big five-oh which is still weird in my brain...but time marches on). I know I just typed a heap of questions here in a long message, thank you for reading :)

Scott Thigpen

These are awesome! I love the colors on these characters

cosmiccanary